


The End of the World

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: Whumptober 2019 [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is the Best, Broken Bones, Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Car Accidents, Dragged away, Forehead Kisses, Forehead Touching, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Cuddling, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 21:23:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20918837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: When Bruce was nine, the world ended.





	The End of the World

When Bruce was nine, the world ended.

Not in the same way it had when he was eight. When Bruce was eight, his world had truly ended, a gun’s retort and a clatter of pearls hurling him into darkness. That was the real ending, one that couldn’t be undone. But that was only _his_ world, an ending that imploded while the rest of life spun on and on and on.

When Bruce was nine, it was more like the actual world exploded. He had been sitting in the backseat of the Mercedes Alfred used to run errands, doing nothing at all. He had done a lot of nothing, back then. The engine rumbled soft and low in a way that was pleasant, and the sun was warm on the leather seats, and Bruce was tired from following Alfred through the grocery store. He had been sitting like a marionette with its strings cut, nearly dozing as he stared out the window.

It had been the wrong window to see the other car. There was no warning for Bruce. The shout from Alfred had been lost beneath the explosive bang of metal hitting metal and of the world upended like a piggybank shook free of its coins. The car had flipped, rolling over once and then nearly a quarter again before rocking back to rest on its wheels.

Bruce had sat in the backseat, ears ringing, head spinning, convinced he was dead. Or perhaps not so much convinced—being convinced of anything would require conscious thought—as he was tolerant of the concept. All-consuming bang. World turned upside down. That was what death must be like.

So he sat quietly in the backseat, gaping like a fish tossed up onto the beach, while outside the car people called to each other and to him. Smoke or steam drifted by the window, momentarily obscuring the sun. Then hands reached through the shattered window, brushed away the broken glass still clinging to the frame, unbuckled his seatbelt, and pulled him free.

Bruce was cradled to a shoulder and carried away. There were more voices, more hands, and a light shone in his eyes. _Shock_ someone pronounced, which seemed wrong. This felt nothing like touching a doorknob with socked feet. But then, he’d thought that the last time someone had said the same thing. The scratchy gray blanket around his shoulders was nowhere as nice as Lieutenant Gordon’s jacket.

He didn’t remember the ambulance ride, other than that it was loud and a lady with close-cropped hair like lamb’s wool held his hand the entire way. She sat next to him, both of them in squeaky purple seats with crisscrossing seat belts across the chest, while her partner monitored the lady in the stretcher opposite.

When they reached the hospital, the lady with the hair helped her partner push the stretcher out of the ambulance, then returned for Bruce. Though he was nine and therefore hadn’t been carried for years, she lifted him out of the seat and onto her hip.

The emergency room was loud, too, but in a different way. The ambulance had been just the sirens, the wail overriding everything else. The ER was too many noises overlapping. Bruce turned and pressed his face into the lady’s shoulder, and she had cupped the back of his head with her hand.

Then she had jostled him gently, and Bruce had lifted his head to see Alfred looking up at him from a stretcher. Bruce had lunged, leaning out of her arms and into Alfred’s, or almost. The lady caught him, kept him hovering above the stretcher even as he reached.

“You’re alright,” Alfred had been saying, one had cupping Bruce’s cheek. “You’re alright.”

It must be true, since Alfred said it. Bruce nodded, agreeing or answering, he wasn’t sure. He was alright. The world had ended, and he was still here. But there was blood on Alfred’s face and strings running to his body and his skin was the wrong color.

The other people in their blue uniforms were calling to each other, using words Bruce didn’t understand and would only piece together later. _X-ray_ he knew from cartoons with bones that danced to silly music, but not _contusion_ or _concussion_ or _distal_ or _comminuted_. Bruce had wrapped his arms around Alfred’s wrist, clinging, but then the stretcher pushed forward.

That was what Bruce remembered most, when he thought about that day. Feeling Alfred pull from his grasp had been a true shock, like sticking a fork in a light socket, a blazing force that cut through the fog. He had been convinced as surely as any nine-year-old boy could be that if Alfred left his sight, he was never coming back.

Bruce hadn’t screamed when his parents were shot, and in the days and weeks that followed, his grief had leeched away his speech until he had been left mute and numb. He hadn’t screamed when he was eight, but when he was nine, he had raged so loudly that his screams drowned out the chaos of the ER. He had clung to the thin metal railing of the stretcher, fists cemented to the bars. He had kicked the lamb’s wool lady in the stomach and bit the man who tried to pry him off.

_Alfred! Alfred!_ had ricocheted off the scuffed white walls and bleached linoleum floors. Bruce’s one word, his only word in over a year, _ALFRED!_ And it had done him no good.

Bruce was no longer nine. He had lived through far worse tragedies than a car accident and come through alive. He knew more now, had talked with the admitting physician, had requested the paperwork on what to expect and had spent the last hour googling more information on his phone. 

And yet when he stared at the single door at the far end of the waiting room, he could still hear his nine-year-old self scream.

An elbow nudged his, making Bruce jerk back to his surroundings.

“Ease up on the grip,” Dick murmured, his smile easy and his eyes on the rest of the waiting room.

Bruce looked down. His knuckles were white and the plastic armrests were creaking. He let go and folded his hands into his lap instead.

Their waiting room was an actual room, a closed-off little pocket of private space rather than the larger undivided area that was the hospital’s true waiting room. Perhaps that was part of the problem, knowing this space was reserved for the privileged and the tragic, a place to hide and to grieve rather than to merely wait. Bruce was grateful to be tucked away from the unsubtle side-eyes, relieved that he only had to keep up the mask of stoicism for his own family, but the room was too small.

Dick sat to his left, their arms pressed together from shoulder to wrist. Unlike Bruce, Dick sat with his spine slouched ands legs splayed, ease personified. He was what Bruce should be, a show of strength and calm for the room. They were Bruce’s children, after all, but Dick was the one preoccupying Damian with a YouTube video, slinging an arm around Tim’s shoulder, winking at Cass, and following Jason whenever he left their holding pen to pace. Bruce could do none of that, frozen by his own anxiety and lack of control.

He wasn’t nine. This wasn’t a brutal car wreck. There had been no screaming, no blood, no smoke or wailing sirens. He wasn’t alone.

Bruce had looked down at his hands—to meditate or simply not to stare a hole in the door, he didn’t know—but his head snapped up as the door opened. Around him, the room rustled into awareness, bristling with anticipation.

A surgeon stepped in, a pale blue cap still covering her hair and booties over her shoes.

“Mr. Wayne?” she said, even as her gaze found Bruce.

Bruce was already standing. “Yes?”

She smiled, the lines at the corners of her eyes deepening, and the coil of tension in Bruce’s gut loosened slightly. “He’s coming out of anesthesia now. If you’d like to come back, you may.”

“All of us?” Tim asked from the corner.

“Just Mr. Wayne for now.” The smile tipped apologetically. “Once he’s a little more coherent, the rest of you can come back.”

Bruce clapped Dick on the shoulder, an unspoken thanks for minding the others, then followed the surgeon out into the hall.

“The surgery went well with no complications,” she was saying. “It was a good, clean break, though it nearly overlapped with an older break in the same bone.”

Bruce hummed. “Car accident,” he said. “When I was young. Oncoming traffic ran a light.”

Back then, Bruce had clung to the nurse who had finally pulled him away from Alfred’s side. The nurse had been the one who kept the staff from sedating Bruce. Though no more than a scrawny elementary schooler, Bruce’s sharp elbows and wildly clawing fingers could draw blood, even back then. The nurse, a broad man with a goatee and kind eyes, had sat with him for hours. He said little and did less. Bruce remembered a few gentle pats on the back, but otherwise the man merely sat and let Bruce sob.

What had endeared him to Bruce, beyond his stillness, was he had also been the one to carry the boy to Alfred’s side after the surgery.

Hospitals all looked the same, in their own way. Off-white walls and patterned floors, the lingering funk of pee and vomit blanketed with chemical cleaners, stainless steel and faded hospital gowns. And though the hospital of Bruce’s childhood sat on the other side of town and decades away, he still rocked with the sense of deja vu as he stepped through the curtained partition.

Alfred lay on a braked stretcher, its back reclined to a gentle slope, a portable heart monitor beeping on a pole to his left. His eyes were closed, and he wore a thin hospital gown and a new cast on his right arm. Thirty years prior, it had been a cast on the same arm, as well as stitches to the forehead.

Bruce nodded his thanks to the surgeon, then pulled up the bedside chair and sat.

“Alfred,” he murmured. There was no answer beyond the steady beep of the monitor.

Bruce reached over the low rail and rested a hand on Alfred’s head. His skin was warm and soft and nearly papery with age. Despite the damage, the old butler had been fortunate in his fall, landing awkwardly on his arm instead of his back or neck or skull. Bruce thanked his good fortune once more as he stroked the pad of his thumb back and forth across the strip of forehead above Alfred’s eyebrow.

He remembered lunging again at the sight of Alfred after his surgery, held back only by the beefy arm of the nurse.

“Careful,” was all the man had said, pointing first to the white cast and then again to the white and clear lines that ran to the heart monitor, oxygen, and various pumps. Only when Bruce, trembling from nerves and impatience, had nodded his understanding did the nurse lift him over the rail and place him gently against Alfred’s side. Bruce had curled up against the butler, ear pressed to the man’s chest, and listened to his heartbeat through all of Alfred’s fussing, the staff’s rounds, and Leslie’s arrival to take them both home.

Bruce didn’t press his ear to Alfred’s chest now, instead allowing the machines around them to tell him what he needed to know, but he couldn’t deny the balloon of relief that swelled in his chest as Alfred’s eyelids fluttered.

He waited until the roving pupils caught on his face and focused through the anesthetic haze before smiling encouragingly.

“Welcome back,” Bruce murmured. Alfred made a noise, a small mewl of confusion, and Bruce reached out to take Alfred’s hand in his. “You’re at Gotham General. Everything is fine. You slipped on the front steps and broke your arm. They took you in for surgery and it went well. You have some new hardware, a prescription for pain medicine, and a reoccurring appointment for physical therapy already set up.”

“Bruce?” Alfred rasped.

Bruce leaned forward. “Yes, I’m here.”

“You’re alright.” Alfred’s hand twitched in his, fingers tightening weakly. “You’re alright.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” It was true, even if his throat had become uncomfortably tight. “And so are you.”

Alfred’s forehead wrinkled beneath Bruce’s hand. “What happened?”

“An accident,” Bruce repeated patiently. “You fell and I didn’t catch you.”

His back had been to Alfred. He had already been striding for the car at the top of the driveway, forever in a hurry.

Alfred was quiet, as if pondering a great mystery, and then asked, “Well, why not?”

Bruce huffed a quiet laugh and leaned further across the rail to press his forehead to Alfred’s. “Stupidity. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“See that it doesn’t,” Alfred agree, but his tone was fond.

“How do you feel?” Bruce asked.

“Like the Sixties have come ‘round again,” Alfred answered promptly, making Bruce laugh.

“No pain, then?” to which Alfred shook his head. Good. The pain would come later as the fall, the surgery, and the healing caught up to a body too old to mend quickly.

Bruce lifted his head just enough to press a kiss to Alfred’s liver-spotted forehead, then asked, “Are you up for some visitors? There are some anxious teenagers climbing the walls over in the next wing.”

Alfred hummed. “Perhaps in a bit,” he said through a jaw-cracking yawn. Or at least that was near enough to what he said that Bruce could feel confident in his nod.

“After you’ve rested, then,” he agreed and sat back in his chair. 

When the post-op tech pulled back the curtain ten minutes later, Bruce looked up from his text to Dick with a small smile.

“Back out again?” she asked as she jotted down the vitals displayed overhead.

“Back out again,” Bruce echoed. Alfred said nothing, asleep on his stretcher with his fingers threaded through Bruce’s.


End file.
